An Atheist Manifesto

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Topic:	Religions > Atheism
User:	"Desertphile"
Date:	19 Dec 2005 03:01:15 PM
Object:	An Atheist Manifesto

Some might find this interesting.
------------------
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris
Editor's Note: At a time when fundamentalist religion has an
unparalleled influence in the highest government levels in the United
States, and religion-based terror dominates the world stage, Sam Harris
argues that progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason is as great a
menace as religion itself. Harris, a philosophy graduate of Stanford
who has studied eastern and western religions, won the 2004 PEN Award
for nonfiction for The End of Faith, which powerfully examines and
explodes the absurdities of organized religion. Truthdig asked Harris
to write a charter document for his thesis that belief in God, and
appeasement of religious extremists of all faiths by moderates, has
been and continues to be the greatest threat to world peace and a
sustained assault on reason.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will
rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not
occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or
days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical
laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same
statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very
moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them
and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they
believe this?
No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a
philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal
to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the
obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be
observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It
carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is,
moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a
non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words
for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise,
atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more
than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of
religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the
260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt
the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his
existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless
destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day.
Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of
us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount
Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public
office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such
a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country
conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a
medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and
terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.
We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally
destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their
parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet
again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be
for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance,
presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this
world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live
rightly-not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of
certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors-we will get
everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we
just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are
reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational
people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those
who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy
themselves for all eternity.
We live in a world of unimaginable surprises--from the fusion energy
that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of
this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth--and yet Paradise conforms
to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean
cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn't know better, one
would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had
created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.
Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans.
More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their
earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to
say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment
Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate
God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city?
Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the
rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned
there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who
had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to
admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary
friend.
Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical
proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the
ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the
light of science. Advance warning of Katrina's path was wrested from
mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God
told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content
to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn't have known that
a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first
gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The
Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina's survivors claim that the
event has only strengthened their faith in God.
As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand
Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can
be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the
Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his
existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly
murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would
be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More
likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God's
grace.
Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of
the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is
for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving
God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he
refuses to cloak the reality of the world's suffering in a cloying
fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how
precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of
human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness
for no good reason at all.
One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be
to shake the world's faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did
the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the
perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th
Century, many of them infants. God's ways are, indeed, inscrutable.
It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered
compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked
ourselves loose of the Earth.
Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not
responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the
claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other
way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is
the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it
solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most
egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either
impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following
pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality.
But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the
faithful use to establish God's goodness in the first place. And any
God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay
marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as
inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely
unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.
There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most
reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard
Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and
Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no
different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to
take the profundity of the world's suffering at face value. It is
terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly
terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That
so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion--to
religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious
diversions of scarce resources--is what makes atheism a moral and
intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the
atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in
touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy
life of his neighbors.
The Nature of Belief
According to several recent polls, 22% of Americans are certain that
Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years. Another 22%
believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44% who go
to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised
the land of Israel to the Jews and who want to stop teaching our
children about the biological fact of evolution. As President Bush is
well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and
motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views
and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national
importance. Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from
these developments and are now thumbing Scripture, wondering how best
to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country
who vote largely on the basis of religious dogma. More than 50% of
Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people
who do not believe in God; 70% think it important for presidential
candidates to be "strongly religious." Unreason is now ascendant in
the United States--in our schools, in our courts and in each branch of
the federal government. Only 28% of Americans believe in evolution; 68%
believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the
head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the
entire world.
Although it is easy enough for smart people to criticize religious
fundamentalism, something called "religious moderation" still
enjoys immense prestige in our society, even in the ivory tower. This
is ironic, as fundamentalists tend to make a more principled use of
their brains than "moderates" do. While fundamentalists justify
their religious beliefs with extraordinarily poor evidence and
arguments, they at least they make an attempt at rational
justification. Moderates, on the other hand, generally do nothing more
than cite the good consequences of religious belief. Rather than say
that they believe in God because certain biblical prophecies have come
true, moderates will say that they believe in God because this belief
"gives their lives meaning." When a tsunami killed a few hundred
thousand people on the day after Christmas, fundamentalists readily
interpreted this cataclysm as evidence of God's wrath. As it turns
out, God was sending humanity another oblique message about the evils
of abortion, idolatry and homosexuality. While morally obscene, this
interpretation of events is actually reasonable, given certain
(ludicrous) assumptions. Moderates, on the other hand, refuse to draw
any conclusions whatsoever about God from his works. God remains a
perfect mystery, a mere source of consolation that is compatible with
the most desolating evil. In the face of disasters like the Asian
tsunami, liberal piety is apt to produce the most unctuous and
stupefying nonsense imaginable. And yet, men and women of goodwill
naturally prefer such vacuities to the odious moralizing and
prophesizing of true believers. Between catastrophes, it is surely a
virtue of liberal theology that it emphasizes mercy over wrath. It is
worth noting, however, that it is human mercy on display--not
God's--when the bloated bodies of the dead are pulled from the sea.
On days when thousands of children are simultaneously torn from their
mothers' arms and casually drowned, liberal theology must stand
revealed for what it is--the sheerest of mortal pretenses. Even the
theology of wrath has more intellectual merit. If God exists, his will
is not inscrutable. The only thing inscrutable in these terrible events
is that so many neurologically healthy men and women can believe the
unbelievable and think this the height of moral wisdom.
It is perfectly absurd for religious moderates to suggest that a
rational human being can believe in God simply because this belief
makes him happy, relieves his fear of death or gives his life meaning.
The absurdity becomes obvious the moment we swap the notion of God for
some other consoling proposition: Imagine, for instance, that a man
wants to believe that there is a diamond buried somewhere in his yard
that is the size of a refrigerator. No doubt it would feel uncommonly
good to believe this. Just imagine what would happen if he then
followed the example of religious moderates and maintained this belief
along pragmatic lines: When asked why he thinks that there is a diamond
in his yard that is thousands of times larger than any yet discovered,
he says things like, "This belief gives my life meaning," or "My
family and I enjoy digging for it on Sundays," or "I wouldn't
want to live in a universe where there wasn't a diamond buried in my
backyard that is the size of a refrigerator." Clearly these responses
are inadequate. But they are worse than that. They are the responses of
a madman or an idiot.
Here we can see why Pascal's wager, Kierkegaard's leap of faith and
other epistemological Ponzi schemes won't do. To believe that God
exists is to believe that one stands in some relation to his existence
such that his existence is itself the reason for one's belief. There
must be some causal connection, or an appearance thereof, between the
fact in question and a person's acceptance of it. In this way, we can
see that religious beliefs, to be beliefs about the way the world is,
must be as evidentiary in spirit as any other. For all their sins
against reason, religious fundamentalists understand this;
moderates--almost by definition--do not.
The incompatibility of reason and faith has been a self-evident feature
of human cognition and public discourse for centuries. Either a person
has good reasons for what he strongly believes or he does not. People
of all creeds naturally recognize the primacy of reasons and resort to
reasoning and evidence wherever they possibly can. When rational
inquiry supports the creed it is always championed; when it poses a
threat, it is derided; sometimes in the same sentence. Only when the
evidence for a religious doctrine is thin or nonexistent, or there is
compelling evidence against it, do its adherents invoke "faith."
Otherwise, they simply cite the reasons for their beliefs (e.g. "the
New Testament confirms Old Testament prophecy," "I saw the face of
Jesus in a window," "We prayed, and our daughter's cancer went
into remission"). Such reasons are generally inadequate, but they are
better than no reasons at all. Faith is nothing more than the license
religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail.
In a world that has been shattered by mutually incompatible religious
beliefs, in a nation that is growing increasingly beholden to Iron Age
conceptions of God, the end of history and the immortality of the soul,
this lazy partitioning of our discourse into matters of reason and
matters of faith is now unconscionable.
Faith and the Good Society
People of faith regularly claim that atheism is responsible for some of
the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Although it is true that
the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to
varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their
public pronouncements were little more than litanies of
delusion--delusions about race, economics, national identity, the march
of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects,
religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: The
anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a
direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, religious
Germans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and
attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the
faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a
predominately secular way, the religious demonization of the Jews of
Europe continued. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in
its newspapers as late as 1914.)
Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what
happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the
contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking
critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, a
rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the
blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist
exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every
religion has more than its fair share. There is no society in recorded
history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
While most Americans believe that getting rid of religion is an
impossible goal, much of the developed world has already accomplished
it. Any account of a "god gene" that causes the majority of
Americans to helplessly organize their lives around ancient works of
religious fiction must explain why so many inhabitants of other First
World societies apparently lack such a gene. The level of atheism
throughout the rest of the developed world refutes any argument that
religion is somehow a moral necessity. Countries like Norway, Iceland,
Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the
Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom are among the least
religious societies on Earth. According to the United Nations' Human
Development Report (2005) they are also the healthiest, as indicated by
measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income,
educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant
mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest in terms of
human development are unwaveringly religious. Other analyses paint the
same picture: The United States is unique among wealthy democracies in
its level of religious literalism and opposition to evolutionary
theory; it is also uniquely beleaguered by high rates of homicide,
abortion, teen pregnancy, STD infection and infant mortality. The same
comparison holds true within the United States itself: Southern and
Midwestern states, characterized by the highest levels of religious
superstition and hostility to evolutionary theory, are especially
plagued by the above indicators of societal dysfunction, while the
comparatively secular states of the Northeast conform to European
norms. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve
questions of causality--belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction;
societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable
the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief.
Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that
atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil
society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does
nothing to ensure a society's health.
Countries with high levels of atheism also are the most charitable in
terms of giving foreign aid to the developing world. The dubious link
between Christian literalism and Christian values is also belied by
other indices of charity. Consider the ratio in salaries between
top-tier CEOs and their average employee: in Britain it is 24 to 1;
France 15 to 1; Sweden 13 to 1; in the United States, where 83% of the
population believes that Jesus literally rose from the dead, it is 475
to 1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to squeeze easily through
the eye of a needle.
Religion as a Source of Violence
One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century
is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal
concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of
human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing
stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord
religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our
world into separate moral communities--Christians, Muslims, Jews,
Hindus, etc.--and these divisions have become a continuous source of
human conflict. Indeed, religion is as much a living spring of violence
today as it was at any time in the past. The recent conflicts in
Palestine (Jews versus Muslims), the Balkans (Orthodox Serbians versus
Catholic Croatians; Orthodox Serbians versus Bosnian and Albanian
Muslims), Northern Ireland (Protestants versus Catholics), Kashmir
(Muslims versus Hindus), Sudan (Muslims versus Christians and
animists), Nigeria (Muslims versus Christians), Ethiopia and Eritrea
(Muslims versus Christians), Sri Lanka (Sinhalese Buddhists versus
Tamil Hindus), Indonesia (Muslims versus Timorese Christians), Iran and
Iraq (Shiite versus Sunni Muslims), and the Caucasus (Orthodox Russians
versus Chechen Muslims; Muslim Azerbaijanis versus Catholic and
Orthodox Armenians) are merely a few cases in point. In these places
religion has been the explicit cause of literally millions of deaths in
the last 10 years.
In a world riven by ignorance, only the atheist refuses to deny the
obvious: Religious faith promotes human violence to an astonishing
degree. Religion inspires violence in at least two senses: (1) People
often kill other human beings because they believe that the creator of
the universe wants them to do it (the inevitable psychopathic corollary
being that the act will ensure them an eternity of happiness after
death). Examples of this sort of behavior are practically innumerable,
jihadist suicide bombing being the most prominent. (2) Larger numbers
of people are inclined toward religious conflict simply because their
religion constitutes the core of their moral identities. One of the
enduring pathologies of human culture is the tendency to raise children
to fear and demonize other human beings on the basis of religion. Many
religious conflicts that seem driven by terrestrial concerns,
therefore, are religious in origin. (Just ask the Irish.)
These facts notwithstanding, religious moderates tend to imagine that
human conflict is always reducible to a lack of education, to poverty
or to political grievances. This is one of the many delusions of
liberal piety. To dispel it, we need only reflect on the fact that the
Sept. 11 hijackers were college educated and middle class and had no
discernable history of political oppression. They did, however, spend
an inordinate amount of time at their local mosque talking about the
depravity of infidels and about the pleasures that await martyrs in
Paradise. How many more architects and mechanical engineers must hit
the wall at 400 miles an hour before we admit to ourselves that
jihadist violence is not a matter of education, poverty or politics?
The truth, astonishingly enough, is this: A person can be so well
educated that he can build a nuclear bomb while still believing that he
will get 72 virgins in Paradise. Such is the ease with which the human
mind can be partitioned by faith, and such is the degree to which our
intellectual discourse still patiently accommodates religious delusion.
Only the atheist has observed what should now be obvious to every
thinking human being: If we want to uproot the causes of religious
violence we must uproot the false certainties of religion.
Why is religion such a potent source of human violence?
o) Our religions are intrinsically incompatible with one another.
Either Jesus rose from the dead and will be returning to Earth like a
superhero or not; either the Koran is the infallible word of God or it
isn't. Every religion makes explicit claims about the way the world
is, and the sheer profusion of these incompatible claims creates an
enduring basis for conflict.
o) There is no other sphere of discourse in which human beings so fully
articulate their differences from one another, or cast these
differences in terms of everlasting rewards and punishments. Religion
is the one endeavor in which us-them thinking achieves a transcendent
significance. If a person really believes that calling God by the right
name can spell the difference between eternal happiness and eternal
suffering, then it becomes quite reasonable to treat heretics and
unbelievers rather badly. It may even be reasonable to kill them. If a
person thinks there is something that another person can say to his
children that could put their souls in jeopardy for all eternity, then
the heretic next door is actually far more dangerous than the child
molester. The stakes of our religious differences are immeasurably
higher than those born of mere tribalism, racism or politics.
o) Religious faith is a conversation-stopper. Religion is only area of
our discourse in which people are systematically protected from the
demand to give evidence in defense of their strongly held beliefs. And
yet these beliefs often determine what they live for, what they will
die for, and--all too often--what they will kill for. This is a
problem, because when the stakes are high, human beings have a simple
choice between conversation and violence. Only a fundamental
willingness to be reasonable--to have our beliefs about the world
revised by new evidence and new arguments--can guarantee that we will
keep talking to one another. Certainty without evidence is necessarily
divisive and dehumanizing. While there is no guarantee that rational
people will always agree, the irrational are certain to be divided by
their dogmas.
It seems profoundly unlikely that we will heal the divisions in our
world simply by multiplying the opportunities for interfaith dialogue.
The endgame for civilization cannot be mutual tolerance of patent
irrationality. While all parties to liberal religious discourse have
agreed to tread lightly over those points where their worldviews would
otherwise collide, these very points remain perpetual sources of
conflict for their coreligionists. Political correctness, therefore,
does not offer an enduring basis for human cooperation. If religious
war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and
cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed
with the dogma of faith.
When we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith;
when we have no reasons, or bad ones, we have lost our connection to
the world and to one another. Atheism is nothing more than a commitment
to the most basic standard of intellectual honesty: One's convictions
should be proportional to one's evidence. Pretending to be certain
when one isn't--indeed, pretending to be certain about propositions
for which no evidence is even conceivable--is both an intellectual and
a moral failing. Only the atheist has realized this. The atheist is
simply a person who has perceived the lies of religion and refused to
make them his own.
Dig last updated on Dec. 7, 2005
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	20 Dec 2005 04:59:31 PM

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Some might find this interesting.
http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/
An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris
Editor's Note: At a time when fundamentalist religion has an
unparalleled influence in the highest government levels in the United
States, and religion-based terror dominates the world stage, Sam Harris
argues that progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason is as great a
menace as religion itself. Harris, a philosophy graduate of Stanford
who has studied eastern and western religions, won the 2004 PEN Award
for nonfiction for The End of Faith, which powerfully examines and
explodes the absurdities of organized religion. Truthdig asked Harris
to write a charter document for his thesis that belief in God, and
appeasement of religious extremists of all faiths by moderates, has
been and continues to be the greatest threat to world peace and a
sustained assault on reason.

It wasn't "organized religion" which called upon American presidents to
invade country after country with "shock and awe", resulting in the death of
mostly non-combattants, women, children and the elderly, and those far in
excess of the numbers which foreign invaders killed in America. Those doing
so were atheists and Satan's minions, the latter professing Christ, yet
doing the opposite from what Christ preached.
Christ is a pacifist and never encouraged people to kill others. Quite
the opposite, we are to love our enemies, and do good unto those who would
abuse us. See below His rules of conduct, which would make waging war neigh
impossible.
Pastor Frank
The most important, yet most ignored commandments of Christ, which would
make war, if not ALL of man's inhumanity to man extinct, nay totally
unthinkable:
THE ROYAL LAW OF CHRIST
**Jesus in Mk 12:30: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy
strength: this is the first commandment.
**31: And the second is alike, namely this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
**Jesus in Mat 22:40 "All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments."
THE GOLDEN RULE OF CHRIST
Jesus in Matt. 7:12: "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them...."
.

User: "I KILLED YOUR GOD-IT WAS EASY!"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	20 Dec 2005 06:13:59 PM

"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote in message
news:1135119571.8a7625bbbc6c89eb4e42e10b45f48aed@roc.usenetexchange.com...

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

It wasn't "organized religion" which called upon American presidents

invade country after country with "shock and awe", resulting in the death

mostly non-combattants, women, children and the elderly, and those far in
excess of the numbers which foreign invaders killed in America. Those

doing

so were atheists and Satan's minions, the latter professing Christ, yet
doing the opposite from what Christ preached.
Christ is a pacifist and never encouraged people to kill others. Quite
the opposite, we are to love our enemies, and do good unto those who would
abuse us. See below His rules of conduct, which would make waging war

neigh

impossible.

Pastor Frank

you get dumber and dumber each passing day.
you religious fuckers are evil to the core.
religion is dying-good fucking riddance.
you religious fucks are responsible for more murder and human misery than
all the natural disasters combined.
dont wanna beleive me-then read this link and try to educate whats left of
your little brain.
http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
--
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented
myself from Christian assemblies.�
-- Benjamin Franklin
AA #2241.
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	22 Dec 2005 01:14:24 PM

"I KILLED YOUR GOD-IT WAS EASY!" <NUNIADAMN@BUSSINESS.NET> wrote in message
news:%51qf.3441$LB5.2365@fed1read04...

"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote in message
news:1135119571.8a7625bbbc6c89eb4e42e10b45f48aed@roc.usenetexchange.com...

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

It wasn't "organized religion" which called upon American presidents

invade country after country with "shock and awe", resulting in the death

mostly non-combattants, women, children and the elderly, and those far in
excess of the numbers which foreign invaders killed in America. Those

doing

so were atheists and Satan's minions, the latter professing Christ, yet
doing the opposite from what Christ preached.
Christ is a pacifist and never encouraged people to kill others. Quite
the opposite, we are to love our enemies, and do good unto those who
would
abuse us. See below His rules of conduct, which would make waging war

neigh

impossible.

Pastor Frank

One can tell you LIKE to kill and don't want anyone to interfere nor
dissuade you.
.

User: "ManMadeGod"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	21 Dec 2005 12:15:09 AM

"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote in message
news:1135119571.8a7625bbbc6c89eb4e42e10b45f48aed@roc.usenetexchange.com...

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

You are so far out of touch with reality it is sickening to think about.
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	22 Dec 2005 01:22:15 PM

"ManMadeGod" <spamhere@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:rp6qf.41287$ih5.8472@dukeread11...

"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote in message
news:1135119571.8a7625bbbc6c89eb4e42e10b45f48aed@roc.usenetexchange.com...

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

You are so far out of touch with reality it is sickening to think about.

That's why we don't worship "reality" like atheists do, but we worship
ideals of reality, like the Kingdom of God we all aim to bring into reality.
.

User: "Virgil"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	24 Dec 2005 03:42:11 PM

In article <43adb131$0$20951$6d36acad@roc.nntpserver.com>,
"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote:

You are so far out of touch with reality it is sickening to think about.

That's why we don't worship "reality" like atheists do, but we worship
ideals of reality, like the Kingdom of God we all aim to bring into reality.

It is not worship but respect we show for reality. When one fails to
show it respect, it has a way of compelling it.
On the other hand, for those that respect reality, acknowledging one's
ignorance is the beginning of wisdom, whereas claiming knowledge one
cannot validate is, for everyone, the beginning of foolishness.
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	26 Dec 2005 01:43:06 PM

"Virgil" <ITSnetNOTcom#virgil@COMCAST.com> wrote in message
news:ITSnetNOTcom%23virgil-DEE5B7.14421124122005@comcast.dca.giganews.com...

In article <43adb131$0$20951$6d36acad@roc.nntpserver.com>,
"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote:

You are so far out of touch with reality it is sickening to think
about.

That's why we don't worship "reality" like atheists do, but we
worship
ideals of reality, like the Kingdom of God we all aim to bring into
reality.

For what you call "respect" we use archaic words like fear and/or
worship. However when it comes to God, we will always be ignorant, for
however one defines "god" it isn't God. Our Christian "God is love" (see
below) and anyone claiming to know love to be able to define love
definitively, is fantasizing.
Pastor Frank
1Jn:4:8: He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for GOD IS LOVE.
1Jn:4:16: And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us.
GOD IS LOVE; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
.

User: "Steve Knight"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	20 Dec 2005 08:33:25 PM

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 22:59:31 +0000, "Pastor Frank"
<PastorFrank@christfirst.edu> wrote:

I am non-plussed by Frank's words. He has crossed the line and it's
time someone spoke the truth.
Frank is an out of control atheist. Ask anyone in our Newsgroup.
We've tried to council him and beg him not to post as a christian but
his psychosis is so deep we can't penetrate.
He wants to make you look stupid and ignorant. That is so cruel!
And posing as one of you only adds oil to the fire. Worst of all, he
even makes the 'claim' he's an 'ex-atheist', knowing what suckers you
are for converts.
If only you could see yourselves from the outside after Frank
finished with you. You'd barf.
Stop, Frank! Have you no decency!? Even I, as Warlord, have
limits... but you! Please!...
Warlord Steve
BAAWA
www.sonic.net/~wooly
.

User: "ManMadeGod"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	19 Dec 2005 03:38:19 PM

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Some might find this interesting.

------------------

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/

An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris

Excellent Post!
.

User: "Scott Richter"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	19 Dec 2005 07:23:11 PM

ManMadeGod <spamhere@nospam.com> wrote:

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135026075.828855.128230@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Some might find this interesting.

------------------

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/

An Atheist Manifesto
A Dig led by Sam Harris

Excellent Post!

If you liked that, I suggest reading Mr. Harris' "The End of Faith"
which was recently released in paperback.
.

User: "dearcilla"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	19 Dec 2005 07:18:12 PM

Desertphile wrote:

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?
.

User: "Neil Kelsey"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	22 Dec 2005 04:19:33 PM

dearcilla wrote:

Desertphile wrote:

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?

You snipped the sentence in a way that changes the meaning. The Editor
was talking about a "progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason,"
not a "progressive tolerance of faith." There's a difference. I'm
assuming you weren't being disingenuous.
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	28 Dec 2005 10:57:36 PM

"Neil Kelsey" <neil_kelsey@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135289973.469050.147550@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...

dearcilla wrote:

Desertphile wrote:

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?

Our Christian "God is love" (1 John 4:8,16) become fully manifested by
Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. Love is always "unreasoned", for
reasoned love isn't love. You might as well get used to it, if not learn to
enjoy the fresh spontaneity of love.
.

User: "Mike Painter"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	30 Dec 2005 08:41:06 PM

Pastor Frank wrote:
<snip>

Our Christian "God is love" (1 John 4:8,16) become fully
manifested by Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. Love is always
"unreasoned", for reasoned love isn't love. You might as well get
used to it, if not learn to enjoy the fresh spontaneity of love.

"God simply means,that quality which is most important in my life. ", Says
Frank.
I'd bet that much of the time other things are "most important"
.

User: "dearcilla"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	26 Dec 2005 09:38:20 PM

Neil Kelsey wrote:

dearcilla wrote:

Desertphile wrote:

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?

No, I found the additional words redundant. Faith _is_ unreason, isn't
it? Whatever reason may tell you about God, isn't faith based, is it?
.

User: "Desertphile"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	21 Dec 2005 10:45:30 AM

dearcilla wrote:

Editor's Note: At a time when fundamentalist religion has an
unparalleled influence in the highest government levels in the United
States, and religion-based terror dominates the world stage, Sam Harris
argues that progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason is as great a
menace as religion itself. Harris, a philosophy graduate of Stanford

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?

It is hoped that humanity will some day grow up and start acting and
thinking like adults. Ergo one does not "bell the cat:" one strives to
educate and inform.
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	24 Dec 2005 07:48:45 PM

"Desertphile" <desertphile@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1135183530.431905.250550@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

dearcilla wrote:

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?

It is hoped that humanity will some day grow up and start acting and
thinking like adults. Ergo one does not "bell the cat:" one strives to
educate and inform.

All unreferenced to the holy and inerrant words of Christ and therefore
totally wrong. Only those doing, or at least attempting to do what Christ
says are Christians. The rest who profess Christ, yet do, and justify doing
the opposite from what Christ stands for, are Satan's minions, who MUST lie.
All of Christ's commandments tell us to love..... "Educate and inform"
will not produce love. Thank you for playing. Please try again.
.

User: "dearcilla"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	21 Dec 2005 05:16:10 PM

Desertphile wrote:

dearcilla wrote:

And the alternative to progressive tolerance of faith is...? I mean,
who's going to bell the cat and what exactly do they propose to do?

It is hoped that humanity will some day grow up and start acting and
thinking like adults. Ergo one does not "bell the cat:" one strives to
educate and inform.

Hope and educate...in an intolerant sort of way. Sounds like a
brilliant plan.
.

User: "Desertphile"
Title: Re: An Atheist Manifesto	21 Dec 2005 08:41:42 PM

dearcilla wrote:

Desertphile wrote:

It is hoped that humanity will some day grow up and start acting and
thinking like adults. Ergo one does not "bell the cat:" one strives to
educate and inform.

Hope and educate...in an intolerant sort of way. Sounds like a
brilliant plan.

What, wrong answers should be "tolerated?" How much does 4+4 equal in
such a world where deliberate ignorance and falsehoods are "tolerated?"
.

User: "Barbara Schwarz"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	26 Dec 2005 04:41:35 PM

Desertphile wrote:

Some might find this interesting.

Not me. It is as stupid as the Communist Manifesto.
I think that people, who deny existance of God or their own
spirituality, are drugged (Desertphile, Dave Rice takes psych drugs,
his brother revealed).
People, who don't feel that they are spiritual and that this part is
something that survives the dead body, can't be anything others than
drugged.
Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science. Accordingly, the clam theory (in
which I don't believe) should be a theory embraced by Dave Rice and his
flock. (Pun intented.)
Barbara Schwarz
--
http://www.thunderstar.net/~Schwarz/
(About Dave Touretzky)
Other interesting websites:
http://www.religiousfreedomwatch.org/extremists/
http://www.alarmgermany.org/
http://bernie.cncfamily.com/sc/sitemap.htm
http://www.cchr.org
http://www.MindFreedom.ORG/
http://www.datafilter.com/mc
http://www.freespeechstore.com
http://www.amatterofjustice.org/amoj/00index.cfm
.

User: "L�rd Ph�lt�r"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	27 Dec 2005 06:46:40 AM

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> astounded us with:
news:1135636895.188984.222540@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science.

Whereas Genesis is sooooooo simple. God did it, MUCH less reading to do,
and it's just bursting at the seams with factual data.
How come there's no mention of warm blooded mammals that lay eggs AND
suckle their young, oversight?
Naaah, it's all sweepingly covered by the specious Chapter 2, verse 19
"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and
every fowl of the air".
Also, no mention of mammals with 2 penises or vaginas...
That wouldn't be because the arabs that wrote the bible didn't know of such
creatures, would it?
But they existed then, they exist now, I'll leave it to you to discover
what they are.
Don't talk to me of fucking holes in theories... the bible is a crock of
***** written by the ancestors of the people that the "coalition" forces are
allegedly "liberating" as we speak.
--
L�rd Ph�lt�r
Alt.Atheism #1938
Denizen of Darkness #44 & AFJC Antipodean Attach�
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	30 Dec 2005 11:30:23 AM

"L�rd Ph�lt�r" <phylter@hsotmail.com> wrote in message
news:QIasf.115471$V7.26925@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> astounded us with:
news:1135636895.188984.222540@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science.

Whereas Genesis is sooooooo simple. God did it, MUCH less reading to do,
and it's just bursting at the seams with factual data.
How come there's no mention of warm blooded mammals that lay eggs AND
suckle their young, oversight?
Naaah, it's all sweepingly covered by the specious Chapter 2, verse 19
"And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and
every fowl of the air".
Also, no mention of mammals with 2 penises or vaginas...
That wouldn't be because the arabs that wrote the bible didn't know of
such
creatures, would it?
But they existed then, they exist now, I'll leave it to you to discover
what they are.
Don't talk to me of fucking holes in theories... the bible is a crock of
***** written by the ancestors of the people that the "coalition" forces
are
allegedly "liberating" as we speak.
L�rd Ph�lt�r
Alt.Atheism #1938
Denizen of Darkness #44 & AFJC Antipodean Attach�
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com

You are off topic as usual. Our Christian "God is love" (1 John 4:8,16).
He is our ideal that we want to live up to. What is your ideal that YOU want
to live up to?
.

User: "wbarwell"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	30 Dec 2005 09:44:17 PM

Pastor Frank wrote:
om

You are off topic as usual. Our Christian "God is love" (1 John
4:8,16).

If you don't HATE, you ain't got Jesus in yer life!
Luke
14:25 And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned,
and said unto them,
14:26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

--
Happy Hogmanay!
Cheerful Charlie
.

User: "wbarwell"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	27 Dec 2005 09:49:20 PM

L�rd Ph�lt�r wrote:

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> astounded us with:
news:1135636895.188984.222540@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many
holes that it can't be declared a science.

Whereas Genesis is sooooooo simple. God did it, MUCH less reading to
do, and it's just bursting at the seams with factual data.

Schwarz is a long time Scientologist. Hubbard created a vast,
complex cosmology, ontology and metaphysics. A pseudoscience
universe far from anything like science or Genesis.
Nothing to do with god nor Genesis or anything a normal
human being would know about. Its like theosophy, or
or maybe A bad and overlong X-Files plot device.
Essentially in Hubbard's cosmology we were once free living
souls each with our own home Universes. One day a few bored
thetans invented a game involving creation of MEST, Matter,
Energy, Space and Time. Do to efforts of more irresponsible
thetans, souls, they learn to lure unsuspecting sucker
thetans into this MEST world, whack them over the head so to speak,
and implant their memories with "forget implants" to make them
forget we were once free thetans and how to get back to that.
Scientology is dedicated to finding a way out of this thetan MEST
amusment park from hell.
Actually, if one gets into the entire mind numbing Hubbard
space opera (Hubbard's term) cosmology of Scientology, its actually
far more clever than Genesis. Still stupid, but not as stupid
as the bible.
Far more whacky and silly.
HCO BULLETIN OF 24 AUGUST AD 13
Central Orgs
Missions
SCIENTOLOGY FOUR
ROUTINE 3N
THE TRAIN GPMs
THE MARCAB BETWEEN LIVES IMPLANTS
THE BETWEEN LIVES IMPLANT
This implant properly has six parts.
l. Pc's actual death (not in first one given).
2. First screen section (to left) giving a false death,
many GPMs calculated to obliterate memory and group the
time track, and some pictures containing groupers. This
says it is 15 days long.
3. The main screen purporting to give the future trillion,
trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years from the year
zero. On this the pc's past implants get stuck up.
4. The "Next Hundred Days." A screen on the right of the
main screen giving a number of positive dichotomy GPMs to
fit the negative dichotomy goals on the first screen
section (2). This also contains a false projection to Earth
"into a baby" complete with sonic on the delivery room (a
home bedroom with oatmeal wall paper or the current fashion
on Earth.)
5. The actual kickoff from the implant station (not by
projection to Earth but being dumped on Earth.)
6. The actual search for a baby.
The main screen is a long white board with a grate near the
top all the way along.
There is a roar in the whole place like blowers going.
Huge numbers of earlier GPMs stack up on (2). Lots of
earlier implants stack up on the main screen. The whole
operation is a huge grouper. But given good TA action, it
all eventually flies apart, especially if many earlier GPMs
and the Train GPMs are run first with good TA action.
The pc has had at least two series of Train Implants and
perhaps as many as 300 Between Lives Implants in the last
many thousands of years. Therefore the way to program all
this is to run mainly earlier GPMs on the pc, then the
Train GPMs, then any more earlier GPMs that can be found
and then the Between Lives Implants.
The Between Lives Implants (and the Train GPMs) have the
full intention of installing a compulsion to return and a
feeling the pc can be reached by them and be pulled about,
and wiping out all memory of former life.
.......
HISTORY OF MAN SERIES 4: PRINCIPAL INCIDENTS ON THE THETA LINE
10 March 1954 Part 4
You understand that by Facsimile One I don't mean that's
the first time a person took a recording. And the reason
that's called Heavy Facsimile One or Service Facsimile One
is it is basic on the service facsimile chain. This is
basic on the service facsimile chain. You don't have to
have this one [blackboard] to run this one [blackboard].
You don't have to have incident one to run Heavy Facsimile
One. But this is the beginning on the service facsimile
chain.
Now, it's a very simple incident, but very difficult to
run. It's very patterned, and you can run it without much
trouble. It simply consists of this: The race, with its
bodies and so forth, inhabiting a place in THIS universe,
a planet in this universe, was hit by, infiltrated by,
an incoming race.
Now, the race to which we are native - the theta line to
which we are native - was actually highly mystic. It was
capable of a lot of things - telepathy, teleportation, odds
and ends, stuff - and concentrated rather heavily in that.
This invader race came in and says - with a lot of
electronics and said, "Boys, all you've got to do is take
this little jim-dandy whizzer, and you know, you will be
twice as 'thetesque' as before."
They sold you all a bill of goods, and evidently we
didn't penetrate their minds, their thoughts or their
intentions. Because one right after the other - bang, bang,
bang, bang, bang - they knocked us off. They knocked us
off with a very simple apparatus, and that simple
apparatus consisted of something that went around your
head and across the top of your head and under your
chin - under your throat - and back of your head. And
everything pointed at the pineal. They turned on the juice
and something came in the middle of the head toward the
pineal, three points on the top of the head toward the
pineal, from under the throat up at the pineal, from the
back of the head into the pineal and from the sides of the
jaws into the pineal. In other words, every point of
entrance toward the pineal was hit suddenly and hard and
very excruciatingly. The net result: the pineal gland,
which at that time occupied what you had as a skull and was
practically all the skull there was, practically folded up.
And your mystic powers more or less went by the boards.
--
Wassail, Happy Holidays, Merry Solstice, Happy
Saturnalia, mull the wine and pass the eggnog.
Cheerful Charlie
.

User: "Elf M. Sternberg"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	26 Dec 2005 05:52:34 PM

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> writes:

I think that people, who deny existance of God or their own
spirituality, are drugged (Desertphile, Dave Rice takes psych drugs,
his brother revealed).

Why? What *is* "spirituality" but a way of lying to ourselves
that the universe somehow "feels" for us. It doesn't. The tsunami had
no feeling, took the good and the evil alike without care. Hurricanes,
flood, fire: the universe simply Does Not Care, and no amount of
self-delusion is going to help you in the end.

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science.

Funny that it's as helpful in making money for pharmaceutical,
agricultural, and medical science as gravitational theory has been
applicable to engineering. Name an alternative.
Elf
.

User: "Carl Rooker"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	26 Dec 2005 09:06:42 PM

"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:877j9r2z7h.fsf@drizzle.com...

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> writes:

I think that people, who deny existance of God or their own
spirituality, are drugged (Desertphile, Dave Rice takes psych drugs,
his brother revealed).

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science.

Funny that it's as helpful in making money for pharmaceutical,
agricultural, and medical science as gravitational theory has been
applicable to engineering. Name an alternative.

Elf

You are right, the universe does not care.
However, the universe did not send His Son for us.
God cares.
God Bless
Carl
.

User: "Elf M. Sternberg"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	27 Dec 2005 10:28:09 AM

"Carl Rooker" <rookerc@dnx.net> writes:

You are right, the universe does not care.
However, the universe did not send His Son for us.

No, but the creator of the universe did. It's bad theodicy to
suppose that He's responsible for the one and not for the other.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf
"You know how some people treat their body like a temple?
I treat mine like issa amusement park!" - Kei
.

User: "ManMadeGod"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	27 Dec 2005 01:24:16 AM

"Carl Rooker" <rookerc@dnx.net> wrote in message
news:1135652807.54332@w9.dnx.net...

"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:877j9r2z7h.fsf@drizzle.com...

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> writes:

I think that people, who deny existance of God or their own
spirituality, are drugged (Desertphile, Dave Rice takes psych drugs,
his brother revealed).

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science.

Funny that it's as helpful in making money for pharmaceutical,
agricultural, and medical science as gravitational theory has been
applicable to engineering. Name an alternative.

Elf

You are right, the universe does not care.

However, the universe did not send His Son for us.

WOW, Look who took the time to give us his presence. It's Carl!
Who did "the universe" send to us? We would like to know Carl.
.

User: "Pastor Frank"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	27 Dec 2005 11:21:22 AM

"Elf M. Sternberg" <elf@drizzle.com> wrote in message
news:877j9r2z7h.fsf@drizzle.com...

"Barbara Schwarz" <barbara.schwarz@gmail.com> writes:

I think that people, who deny existance of God or their own
spirituality, are drugged (Desertphile, Dave Rice takes psych drugs,
his brother revealed).

Atheists have no other alternative to explain the existance of the
world through the evolution theory, and that theory has so many holes
that it can't be declared a science.

Funny that it's as helpful in making money for pharmaceutical,
agricultural, and medical science as gravitational theory has been
applicable to engineering. Name an alternative.
Elf

Still way off topic I see. Religion is about what kind of person you
are, a good person or an evil one. Neither "medical science" nor
"gravitational theory" have ANY bearing upon what kind of person you are.
.

User: "Elf M. Sternberg"
Title: Re: Atheist Manifesto is crap.	28 Dec 2005 08:29:09 AM

"Pastor Frank" <PastorFrank@christfirst.edu>, oathbreaker and liar for
Jesus, writes:

Still way off topic I see. Religion is about what kind of person
you are, a good person or an evil one. Neither "medical science" nor
"gravitational theory" have ANY bearing upon what kind of person you
are.

Sorry, Frank, but I don't need a god-bot to tell me about good
and evil.
Elf
.

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